Protecting and Restoring Wetlands at a Coastal Power Plant Site

We Energies is constructing two high efficiency supercritical pulverized coal power plants in Southeastern Wisconsin on the Lake Michigan coast as a component of their Power The Future plan. These facilities will provide 1,230 megawatts of electrical generation at the site of an existing power plant. The overall property is approximately 1,000 acres. Scattered throughout the overall property, there are approximately 100 acres of isolated and riverine wetlands, of which 7 acres are considered "coastal wetlands". The new facilities were designed to minimize wetland impacts as much as possible while maintaining certain essential design features. Wetland impacts totaled 20.22 acres for the entire project. For compensatory mitigation, wetland restoration was completed through various techniques such as drain tile removals, scraping slope -washed topsoil to historic ground surface elevations, creation of check dams, historic fill removal and waterway re-channelization and restoration. A total of 35.7 acres of wetlands were restored, while 9.7 acres of woodlands were enhanced, and 44.7 acres of prairie was restored.